


Sweet Home, Midvale

by Superceoluv



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Jealousy, Kara is an art teacher, Kara makes sea glass sculptures - Freeform, Lena is an architect, Minor Samantha "Sam" Arias/Lena Luthor, Minor character deaths in the past, Southern accents, Southern living, Sweet Home Alabama AU, tragic past
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 17:41:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20510930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Superceoluv/pseuds/Superceoluv
Summary: Lena returns home to Midvale, Alabama years after leaving her heartbroken wife behind. She intends to secure an amicable divorce so she can remarry, but finds herself falling in love with her past life and maybe her not so quite ex-wife too all over again as well.





	Sweet Home, Midvale

**National City, California **

It's close to 7 o'clock at night on a Tuesday in January and Lena Lance (still legally Luthor-Zor-El) is both half asleep and even more honestly half dead to the world as she literally just slowly strolls off of a private jet into a waiting black BMW. She arrives from a short commuter flight from Los Angeles to her slightly more Northern California home in National City. She still needs to decompress now from both all of the anticipated, yet overflowing excitement as well as the unexpected tediousness of California’s Grande Architectural Exposition that took place over the course of this past week in Los Angeles.

During her trip, her colleagues Mercy Graves and Jack Spheer continuously teased her about her Southern twangy drawl. They chided her about how it progressively spilled out through all of her nitpicking to make sure everything went just as smoothly as possible with her innovative building presentations with virtual reality technology incorporated into it all.

Her mind drifts to how at one point Mercy told her, "To stop all your useless daydream nonsense about ever retreating tail back to snailsville, USA to live an easy breezy quiet existence where you were a big fish floundering in a small pond and trade your former cowgirl spurs and boots in for all the designer pumps you could ever want and settle yourself down out here in Tinseltown already."

She had to constantly remind Mercy how she wasn't actually a horse riding cowgirl from Texas, but just a lowly farm girl from very rural Alabama. Further, as an architect, she would be wearing more sensible shoes like construction boots than any designer pumps. Well, she could indulge in things like fancy footwear when she wasn’t on a worksite.

Jack added something along the lines of how Lena needed to get used to being both overwhelmed and overworked because she was being fast-tracked to becoming a 'smash hit' and 'making waves' in all the big places now starting with Northern California’s prime city for new architecture endeavors San Francisco and it’s sprawling surrounding areas both north and south.

Lena contentedly sighs and smirks a little as she thinks back on the successes of the past week. John Jones chose to give a coveted multi-page spread to her new building ideas in Architectural World’s upcoming rising forward issue for the fall.

The truth is, yes, Lena much prefers her more hurried life out here in California to the way too laid back days of her more simpleton upbringing of the deep south. But, Lena also hates it that her life is so fast-paced at the moment.

She's supposed to meet her girlfriend right now for some fancy schmancy political fundraising dinner before she can even bring her travel bags back to her apartment. She would much rather blow off this fundraiser full of idiot blowhards and just go back to her own place and draw a long, hot bubbly bath and simply soak and relax. Her girlfriend could even join her and help soothe her muscles and get things steaming up at the same time.

No such luck though as Lena purposefully adorns a fairly conservative dark purple dress number with short sleeves and an only slightly dipping neckline. Her ample bosom surprisingly fits and stays inside of the chest arc of this dress well. Lena also sports 6 inch black stilleto heels, which still won't give her any height advantage over her taller girlfriend who she knows will very likely opt to wear heels as well tonight.

Lena is a bit surprised when her driver Nathan pulls up into a dark back alley behind a strip of National City buildings right along the back loading dock doors of one of them. Lena doesn't recognize this area of the city at all even with the sparse street lights in the dark of this early evening.

Lena jokes, "Nate, are you trying to get us both murdered right before Sam and I come out publicly as a couple to help Patricia with her Gubernatorial campaign?"

Nate laughs as he responds, "No, Miss Lance. Everything is absolutely fine and dandy here. I'm going to open the back door for you and some important people will escort you the rest of the way ahead. I will wait right here for you so you can just run back in case there are any problems."

Lena sneers and laughs at the same time. "Okay, Nate, be all mysterious! But, how many times do I need to tell you to just call me Lena and not Miss Lance?"

Nate cryptically responds, "I may soon call you by another name anyways, Miss Lance uhh Miss Lena."

Lena briefly wonders about what Nate just alluded to when she spots Sam as she walks towards her with one hand tucked behind her back. Tonight, Sam wears a thin Armani black suit that looks to be skin tight and sinfully painted on her with a dark purple shirt underneath and a skinny black tie over it and chunky dark purple heels that match her shirt and help her already long legs go on for days.

Lights quickly flash on in the room beyond the doorway behind Sam.

A single tear rolls down Lena's face as she lifts her hands and questions, "Sammy, honey, what is all of this? What are we doing here?"

Sam gets down on one knee and pulls a bouquet of white lilies out from behind her back and very nervously stutters out, "Marry me, Lena Kieran Lance?"

"Me-You-What? Seriously?"

"Hmm, umm, uhh, yes, ha, as an accomplished attorney and after a year together, Lena, I ideally should be able to do this properly without stumbling through all of my words like a babbling toddler."

The bumbling slightly incoherent mess her girlfriend is right now almost reminds Lena of someone else, but Lena shakes that thought right away as she tries to help Sam unwind from her obvious nerves, "It's fine. Please just tell me whatever way you can.”

Sam coughs and then brightly smiles with her dimpled cheeks glowing from the light above them before she continues, "Well, Lena, my sweetheart, like your name's meaning, you brought this incomparable light into my life since the day we first met and Ruby absolutely adores you and I don't want to go another day without knowing that you want to be in my life and hers too forever. So I'm going to risk asking the same question again even with your indefinite, questioning response before as frankly I do not usually ask questions I do not already know the answers to. So Lena Lance will you become my wife and be the light of my life forever?"

Instead of a resounding yes, Lena manages to semi-elatedly eek out, "Of course!"

Sam stands up and runs over to tightly hug Lena and kisses her passionately. Lena kisses back with almost equal fervor. She is quite a bit shell-shocked that Sam just asked her to marry her. Especially since she is legally separated, but still married to her first wife. A secret Sam knows nothing about because Lena was certain her divorce would have gone through before anything got too serious with Sam. 

When their celebratory lip-lock breaks, Sam nuzzles her nose against Lena's and holds her shoulders to pull her close. She looks into Lena's teary eyes and softly speaks, "I'll take that as a definitive Yes! Yay for us! I love you so much, Lena!"

Lena laughs. "I agree. I mean I know you do and I do too, but you never answered my first question about all of this?!?" Lena holds her arms out wide to the larger room around her. 

Sam picks up Lena and spins her around in the air before she stops and answers, "So, uhh, yes, all of this is your chance to choose what kind of engagement ring that you want. I wanted to do something more personal, but you know how absolutely awful I am at jewelry selections. Plus, I remember you used to wear a necklace and a bracelet a lot, but I have never once seen you wear an actual ring during the whole time we have been together so I have had very little idea what exactly you would like and no perfect way to gauge your actual ring size."

Lena picks out a 7 carat stunner that Sam slides on her hand that she then refuses to let go of. She holds Lena's hand over the diamond on the car ride over and while they say hello to Sam's mother at her campaign event. Patricia insists that Sam hug her for a good mother daughter shot and she freaks out when she spies the giant rock on Lena's hand.

She lifts Lena's arm in the air and yells, "Oh my goodness, Sam, you're engaged?!?" as every photographer in sight snaps photos of the trio.

All of the National City Newspapers, several different California ones and USA Today run some iteration of this headline the next day:

Southern Belle Architect Lena Lance Lands Hand of Leading Gubernatorial Hopeful’s Rebellious Daughter 

The worst of which:

Political Dynasty Heiress Trades Refined Men for Uncouth Cowgal 

Leads to Lena and Sam's post engagement celebratory breakfast in bed being interrupted by Sam's mother's barrage of phone calls and texts for Sam to come meet with her immediately. Sam wants to ignore all of it, but Mrs. Arias' campaign manager starts to blow up Lena's phone as well. 

Lena with irritation tells Sam, "You flip off one photographer over a double wide trailer comment and this is the kind of idiocy that gets printed about us."

Sam lovingly kisses Lena's neck, "Baby, I'm still going to marry you. I don't care whatever any idiot papers say about my leading lady! It's not like you have actually seen the inside of one of those streamline trailers anyways? Your family owns a whole tobacco farm and runs a cigarette factory? They're sort of Southern royalty, right?"

Lena just hums and kisses Sam's questions away without answering any of them directly. She can’t admit to her fiancée that she’s not an heiress to the Lancelot Lights cigarette fortune that her friend from high school Sara actually is, but just the daughter of a corn farmer. Sam just always presumed Lena was one of those particular Lances and never knew Lena used a faux moniker for herself and her Architecture firm. 

Thankfully, Sam agrees to meet with her mother alone for once since Lena needs to figure out how to get Kara to finally agree to a divorce before it becomes public knowledge and a scandal that Sam proposed to an already married woman. 

**Later that Same Day/Night in Midvale, Alabama **

While she was growing up, Lena's daddy, Lionel Luthor, often told her that lightning never strikes in the same spot twice. His wise words seem to signify both a life circumstances metaphor and a love metaphor. You can't fall in love with the same place and same person twice. At least not in quite the same way is what Lena is about to find out.

Why Lena now comes home to the town of Midvale in Krypton County, Alabama after 5 long and prosperous years away confuses her a little, but there's not much of a mystery in why she's here either. Of course, she misses her parents and she for a very long time missed Kara and all of her old friends back home here too. But, she very purposely ran away and Kara never came looking for her. Neither did anyone else from Midvale for that matter. She's not entirely sure anything would have been much different if they had.

Samantha 'Sam' Arias and her little girl Ruby are in her life now and Sam loves Lena enough to secure her promised hand in marriage. Maybe it's not the same way Kara loved her. Lena's resigned to the fact that no one will ever love her the same way Kara did once, but, that's in the past and she's much happier now then in the tumultuous days things ended with Kara.

Lena does not intend to re-open a door to a once upon a time promising that turned painful past now long gone. Instead, she wants to finally close herself off from the most wounded chapters of her life for good. She needs a divorce from the wife she knows she left equally damaged behind her in order to marry Sam and move on with her own bright future. She hopes Kara might be more willing to let her go once they meet again in person.

As a taxi cab drives her from Midvale airport to Old Crow's Nest Lane located deep in the secluded woods along her hometown's fairly large lake, raindrops start to fall and tap along the cab's windows. The noise causes Lena to drift off into a pleasant memory of her former life here.

** *******

** 20 Years Ago**

_A little blonde haired girl with pig tails in her hair and little black framed spectacles who wears a dirt-strewn white t-shirt under paint stained denim overalls runs barefoot and skips stones along the sandy shore of Midvale’s harbor that borders the Gulf of Mexico with her companion a tinier raven-haired girl in a purple dress with white lillies on it and stand-out green jelly sandals. _

_The blonde tells her raven haired friend that, "I'mma gunna mare-reey yuu sumday Lee-nah Kare-rin Lou-tther!"_

_"Why ya wanna marry me, Kara?"_

_"So I can hold yah and hug yah when-ev-ah I wanna!"_

_"Ya can hold me and hug me whenevah ya wanna as my best friend, Kara. But, girls...girls jus don't marry each othah, silly. When they grow up, they marry boys!"_

_"Nah-uh-uh! They don't have tuh all mare-reey boys. I don't wanna mare-reey any boy. Boys are all gooey and gross and meanies and rough and stupid. Gurls are all beautiful and soft and smart and sweet and oh jus one-duh-full! And, I promise I will mare-reey yah someday Lee-nah so I can jus kiss yah when-ev-ah I wannah."_

_"Ya wanna kiss me? Like on the cheeks or sumthin? Why ya wanna do that?"_

_"Nah! Not on the cheeks, but, like on the lips?!? 'Cuz Lee-nah I luv yah! So can I uhh uhh umm?!?_

_"Can ya whut?"_

_"Kiss yah right now?"_

_Lena giggles with her head thrown back in the stormy windy air around them. Then, she tilts her head forward again and softly smiles back at Kara and nods her head yes. Kara leans down to gently brush their lips together. Right at that moment, a lightning bolt cracks down in the sand right beside them momentarily jolting them apart. They both fall over into the wet sand and Kara rolls over to cover Lena._

_Lena shrieks as lightning continually flashes around them but Kara looks down at her and assures her, "We will be okay Lee! Do yah know why?"_

_Lena confidently answers, "Like my daddy always says 'cuz lightning ne-vuh strikes in the same place twice!"_

_Kara smiles. "That's right!"_

_Lena points next to them and asks, "But, what about the smoke in the sand there?"_

_Kara looks over and answers, "We will come back here tah-mar-ruh when the sun is out again and I will show yah something special there under the sand."_

_Lex and Clark both race up the beach through random lightning flashes and scream shout for Kara and Lena to get their little butts in gear out of this thunderstorm back to the safety of the Zor-El family pickup truck. Both teenage boys end up picking up a hollering little girl and slinging her over their shoulders back to Kara’s daddy's pickup truck. They smush Kara and Lena together in the middle of the front seat cushion. Lex throws a large beach towel around the now hugging, shivering girls as Clark starts the truck and shifts it into gear to head back to the Luthor home. _

** *******

A roll of thunder outside the car in the present stirs Lena awake from her mostly positive recollection of her past life here. It’s a bit jarring that a distant memory of her first kiss with Kara is the first thing she remembers when she realizes there isn’t going to be a last kiss with Kara during this visit that may be her last to Midvale if not just her last visit to the home her and Kara shared in better days as a happily married couple.

The cab driver tells her they've made it to the address she requested. Aside from a flickering porch light, the house is dark. Lena walks up and looks through the dust she wipes off the windows and doesn't see any signs of life. She looks back to the muddy driveway and realizes Kara’s old blue pickup isn’t here.

She climbs atop a black milk crate she finds on the porch and manages to find the spare house key above the doorway where she left it covered in dirt and cobwebs as if it hasn’t been used in all these years. She goes inside and decides to nap on Kara’s old couch, well their old couch they picked out together that’s just as comfortable as she remembers it to be.

About an hour later, a large and very wet hound dog runs through the door and leaps up into Lena's lap and licks her face as she laughs.

"Oh how I missed you, Butterfingers, my sweet boy! I'm sorry I've been away so long. I think you grew a lot bigger!"

"That's not Buttuhfinguhs, that's Snickuhs!"

"Oh, hello Snickers! Are you a good boy? Do you think you can jump out of my lap and maybe I can wrestle up a treat for you?"

"Trying to bribe my hound away from me with food, woman?"

"Well, it always worked before and on you too. Oh?!? Kara?!?...Wow, you don't wear your glasses anymore and you cut your hair?"

"No, well, yes, I do, but contacts most of the time. And, yes, it's been this short about three years now. It's easier to maintain and no one's pulling on my hair everyday anymore like someone used to yank on my ponytails."

Lena thinks both about the implication of what Kara just said and how she wishes she can reach out and run her own finger tips through that new gorgeous short studdish mane Kara sports well.

Instead, she lowly whispers, "Handsome."

Kara half smiles as she asks, "Whuht was that?"

"It's nice."

"Oh, well, thank yah!"

"Yah look raathah swell yahself!"

"So what happened to Butterfingers, Kara?"

Kara gets a forlorn look in her eyes and deeply sighs.

"Well, I think he uhh, uhm uhh he died of a broken heart waiting on that door to swing open to reveal his other momma who never came back to him."

Kara tosses Snickers a few treats before she adds, "I don't want yah getting too attached to Snickuhs. He's my good boy, not yurs."

A few tears unexpectedly roll down Lena's face, but she wipes them away, "Yes, you're quite right. He's your hound dog and not mine. I'm so sorry."

"So, woman why are yah back here anyhoot all uh sudden now?"

Lena clears her throat. "Well, I need you to please sign the divorce papers! I sent them to you several times and you always sent them back to my lawyer unsigned. I can't for the life of me understand why you never signed them. You know things have been over between us for a very long time, Kara."

"Oh, have they? Truly?"

"Yes and yes! Look we both need to move on unhindered. There are even dummy proof tabs here for where you need to print and sign your own name."

Kara shakily holds the now tenth copy of unsigned divorce papers Lena’s forced on her in her hands, but quickly changes the subject matter of their conversation as this is very painful, at least for her.

"Have yah gone to visit yur folks yet?"

Lena frowns and grinds her teeth.

"No, I have not."

"Well, why the heck yah ain’t dun that?"

”I guess I’m afraid they won’t want to see me as it’s been so long.”

"That’s a load of hogwash. Yur daddy and momma would love to see yah for shur. Why don't yah go visit them while I sit here and read through these here duh-vorse papers and maybe have my lawyer take a pick thru them too. I don't want yah playing any games on me through these."

"Kara, it's almost eleven o'clock at night. Plus, it's raining. And, it's all extremely straightforward. You can have this house and all the money you have. From the looks of things, it's not much more than what I left you with."

Kara forcefully pushes Lena towards and through the front door, "Well, yah would know nuttin’ about that and who I am now seeing as yah left to never return until now. I would like yah to leave since you don't want me nor to be in this house no more. GET OUT!"

Lena slams the large wooden front door as she storms out sort of shocked by Kara’s unfriendly command. She sits outside on the porch steps and defeatedly holds her head in her hands for a few minutes before she climbs in a back window and interrupts Kara as she chugs down what looks like a beer bottle which stuns her.

“I promise I will leave, BUT only after you sign these papers, Kara. And is that...?”

”...Root beer, not real beer. Have nipped not even a lick of liquor since the day after yah left that note taped to a long neck and up and disappeared.”

”Ohh.”

Kara and Lena stare at each other with matching sullen, sunken eyes. Not long after that, there's a loud knock on the front door that breaks the sad silence between them. When Kara gets up and opens it, she tells the visitor, "Thank yah for gettin’ here so fast! I can't seem to get rid of this here trespassuh!"

"Little Magpie Sawyer!" Lena giddily shouts out

"No, no, no, without your choo-choo train shoes yuu are barely an inch and a half taller than me if even that Luthor and No one's called me that since..."

Kara jabs Maggie's arm and breaks in, "Last night...probably...yur wife Kate."

"Oh wow, Maggie! You and Kate Kane got married?"

Maggie widely smiles with her dimples on view. "Oh, yeah it will be three years hitched this August!"

Lena curiously inquires, "What about Alex though?"

Maggie and Kara both loudly cough and clam up before Kara changes the subject, "Hey, there, good Sheriff Sawyer, I think there's still an active outstanding warrant out for the mysterious thief that dumped Old widow Grant's (Cat's mother’s) tractor in Midvale Creek ten years ago?"

Lena shrieks out, "Kara, you wouldn't dare!"

Kara ignores Lena and yells back, "Check fancy city lady's goofy brand purse as you might find a certain tractor crank key in the back pocket in there."

Lena corrects Kara, "It's actually a Gucci purse," right before she stares down Maggie like a deer caught in the headlights when Maggie devilishly grins whilst she pulls out and holds up the rusty tractor crank key that Kara so obviously planted.

Lena protests, "Clearly planted and that could be a key to anybody's tractor!"

Maggie continues to wickedly smirk as she flips the key over to show the still prominent through the rust KGG initials engraved on the backside for Katherine Gertrude Grant.

"I'm sorry, but I've gotta take ya in Lena _Looter_ Luthor."

"Geezus h corndog, Sawyer, I really hoped that stupid nickname would have died down by now."

Lena laughs as Maggie cuffs her. Kara and her hound walk with them out to Maggie’s sheriff’s truck. Kara waves devilishly at Lena after Maggie closes the passenger door on her as Snickers leaps up and paws at the window like he’s sad Lena’s leaving this way.

**The next morning**

Cat Grant (jokingly) glares at Lena behind the bars of the town's solitary jail cell, "Oh, wow, it really is you little Lena Kieran Luthor all grown up here in the flesh in the drunk tank. Must bring you back to the good ole’ days.”

“Oh yeah, of picking up Kara pretty much off the floor in here after one too many of her old benders. Thanks for that unhappy flicker of memories.”

“Oh, you’ve gotten sassier, huh? I remember many people including your own mother called you _Little Miss Sassafras. _Anyways, I think _Looter_ is a much more apropos nickname for you right now with your past tractor thieving ways that have so recently been brought to light. You might get anywhere from one to three years for destruction of someone else’s commercial property."

A now distraught Lena who looks to be near tears cries out, "I'm so, so, so sorry, Miss Grant!!! It was a stupid prank Jimmy Olsen and Winn Schott put me up to! They didn't think I would actually do it!"

"Aww, don’t worry Lena, sweetie! This was all a bit of a prank on you orchestrated by Kara to get your tail feathers all ruffled up. The tractor insurance company paid out claim money that covered the theft, vandalism; and, subsequent, abandonment years ago. You are even luckier Kara rescued you from being trapped that day in the slick quicksand of that muddy creek."

"Oh, thank the morning sun! You knew all along, didn't you Miss Grant? And you never once said anything to me when I worked for you before at the bank?"

Cat winks and nods. "Just as I never mentioned that time Kara and you and your little misfit buddies got that crazy idea to try and rob the bank and strapped firecrackers to that poor little feline flashy something or other because you thought those firecrackers could break the vault open. Instead, there was just a fire in the bank that day that had everybody acting like a bomb had gone off."

Lena chuckles. "Sorry about all of that commotion too. Is little scorched Streaky still kicking around scaring the new to town folks?"

"Nope, no recent sightings of that particular nine lives creature, who probably lost most of those lives back on that fateful firecrackergate morning."

"I just can't believe Kara really kept that tractor crank key all this time."

"Oh, you silly little raven bird, I think she's kept a lot of things of yours maybe even the true key to your heart?!? Have you kept the key to hers?!?" 

Lena sternly, but also sullenly snaps back as she answers her, "No, no, no, Miss Grant! I've moved on in these last few years."

"Well, then, you can move yourself along from this here jail cell right now and either go return to whomever you've moved on to greener pastures with or maybe stop over and see your folks if you're feeling brave enough. If you do the latter, please give Lionel and Lillian my best regards! Still, it's a real shame that you and Kara didn't ever work things out properly. For what it's worth, I thought you two gals truly had something special."

Lena despondently looks away from Cat and walks through the open jail cell door more ready than ever to leave this town again.

When Lena steps outside the county jail doors, however, she finds it's a blinding sunshine-y day and spots her equally shiny bald-headed daddy standing next to his rusty red pickup truck ready to welcome her back.

"Oh, sugah you look like you need a hot bath and a slice of one of your momma's best pies!"

Lena finds herself surprisingly happy to see Lionel and slipping back more into her Southern twangy drawl now, "Hey-ya, daddy! I missed ya sumthin’ fierce!"

"I missed yuh too, pumpkin! Just so yuh know I didn't tell yur momma that yur back yet! Nor what yuh've been up tuh!"

Lena breathes a long sigh of relief, "Ohh...kay, good. Thanks, daddy.”

Of course Lionel very unironically pops in and loudly blasts an old cassette tape single of Sweet Home Alabama as they head back to the humble Luthor abode to face Lena's mother, Lillian. Lena just closes her eyes to rest a little and happily laughs at her daddy’s music selection.

**Author's Note:**

> FYI: It’s going to be awhile before this gets updated as I basically just published it before the draft got deleted again. It’s taken me almost a year to get this chapter together. My motivation for writing for SuperCorp has been low.


End file.
